greenbenchramblings

So I promised to return with a visit to my garden journal for 2020 with my entries for December, the last for 2020.

On my first page for December I wrote,‘December, the last month of the strangest year ever, 2020? For us long periods of lockdown, sometimes exaggerated by weeks of shielding, all to help us avoid Covid 19. Our garden was our saviour – what would we have done without it? During this month wildlife shared our patch, hedgehogs have hibernated in the shelters we have provided for them, late bees, wasps and flies continued to enjoy the flowers of plants we grow to help look after them.

Our garden, front and back, features bird feeding stations visited daily by flocks finches and tits, joined by individual blackbirds, robins, dunnock and wren. Members of the thrush family are joined by blackcaps to gorge on berries from plants we have planted specifically chosen for that reason. Kites and buzzard put on flight displays in the sky above the garden, occasionally giving out mewing calls.’

Added the bottom of the page I added three photographs of important winter wildlife plants, providing flowers and berries, Fatsia japonica, Euonymus europaeus ‘Red Cascade’ and Hedera helix ‘Arborescens’.

My second page features one of my favourite plant families, the ferns, truly an obsession of mine for several years now!

The page opposite displays simply a set of my drawings featuring a skeletal poppy seed-head, fund in our ‘Hot Garden’. Simple beauty! I used pencil, fibre tip pen and Japanese Brush Pens.

‘The winter garden is good at springing surprises, unexpected visits by bees and wasps, out of season flowers and skeletal leaves. This December surprised us by presenting us with a complete skeleton of a poppy seed-head.’

More seed-heads are shown over the page, this time featuring those of agapanthus. ‘We grow lots of agapanthus for their dramatic blue, purple or white spherical flowers in mid and late summer. But come winter and their beautiful skeletal seed-heads take over.’

More of my drawings appear on the page opposite, some sketches done in Japanese Brush Pens. I studied an evergreen pink-flowered geranium which showed us why the family is known as ‘cranesbills’.

Over the page a double page spread features red berried shrubs and a beautiful succulent. On the left hand page I wrote, ‘A mid-December visit to one of our favourite plant centres saw us sorely tempted to acquire a beautiful specimen of Ilex verticillata. Its red berries glow against black stems. We already have a specimen bought a few years ago, again whilst in berry. We did not realise that we needed two plants to get any berries, so the future chances of a repeat berrying seems more hopeful.

We also grow several varieties of shrubby cotoneasters which produce masses of red berries for us to enjoy and equally for thrushes and blackbirds to feast upon. We also grow a tree version but this displays yellow berries!’

I wrote at the top of the right hand page, ‘My flowering plant of the month is one of my favourite succulents, Echeveria ‘Black Prince’, with its deep brown foliage rosette from which a flowering stem emerges. On top of this stem sit bright green buds opening to expose orange-salmon flowers with lemon yellow centres. Arising from the centre is a cluster of bright yellow stamens.’

My final words for December appear on the top of the next page, ‘Foliage is such a powerful force in the December garden, outside in the borders and undercover in our glasshouse, on succulents, grasses, shrubs and perennials.’

So there it is, the last monthly report from my Garden Journal 2020. My next visit to my journal will be for January next year, 2021!

We grow lots of grasses in our garden as they provide all year interest as well as being great for wildlife. Birds eat the seeds in the autumn and winter and seek out insects within them in spring, summer and autumn. The bases of grasses are grand places for insects, invertebrates and moth pupae to overwinter. Thus we don’t cut our grasses down until late February and early March. If any collapse in the wind we cut them down and bundle them up as wildlife shelters.

We grow them because they pick up the slightest wind and move gracefully, they catch the light to adding extra interest. They vary so much in structure, colour, texture and shape.

At this time of the year we enjoy the deciduous and evergreen varieties equally. We grow lots of different varieties so have much to enjoy every cold winter’s day.

In his talks Dan Pearson, who uses grasses fully in his designs, describes grasses as having a diaphanous quality and talks of how they, “…..hold the light and communicate the movement of air, or the lack of it.”

Here is a selection of photos taken in December of some of the grasses growing in our garden for you to enjoy.

The one evergreen grass we grow most of is the Carex family. They feature so many shades of green, some sport variegations but they all enjoy any aspect. They are particularly suited to shade or semi-shade equally well which makes them very flexible.

We often use carex to edge paths and borders too, where they give us interesting neat low ‘hedges’ of many textures and colours.

To recognise that we have said goodbye to 2020 and to celebrate seeing the back of such an awful year controlled by Covid 19, I decided to wander around the garden and look for the brightest of garden colours, orange.

I hope you enjoy seeing what I found – some photos are more obvious than others where orange is harden to find!

In the first gallery orange appears brightly in flowers, primulas and witch hazels but more subtly in the stripes of grasses or the bark of trunks and stems.

In gallery 2 we find orange in berries of Viburnum opulus, in fallen leaves, cornus stems and even the delicate seed head of an agapanthus.

In my third gallery oranges are found in violas and at the tip of a bud of a welsh poppy, on the peeling bark of Betula ‘Kanzu’ and Prunus serrula, and in the fresh leaves of Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’.

For the penultimate gallery I took photos of delicate orange in grass blades and Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’ stems, in late blooms of Rosa ‘Warm Welcome’ and a hint of orange in the brown seed heads of Sedum now known as Hylotelephium.

The final gallery shows oranges in foliage of cotinus, in stems of Acer ‘Sango Kaku’, in Hamamelis ‘Jelena’ and I found bright orange in metal furniture.

So I found quite a few examples of oranges throughout our borders in the garden. I hope you enjoyed a little brightness to start off a new year!

When we revamped our wildlife pond after discovering its leak, we also took apart our bog garden alongside it and replanted it with new plants. We decided to feature Hesperantha previously known as Schizostylus.

This lovely little collection are adding delicate colour to our bog garden during the last two months of the year. Different shades of reds and pinks are provided by Hesperantha coccinea ‘Major’, H. c. ‘Oregon Sunset’, H. c. ‘Wilfred H. Bryant’ and H. c. ‘Pink Princess’. We are now in search of a good white flowered Hesperanthus to finish the effect.

Christmas morning 2020 we woke to a blue sky and below zero temperatures. I took my trusty Nikon out into the cold around the middle of the day to record a short garden tour which is below for you to enjoy.

Have a Happy Christmas everyone and let’s hope it helps us forget what a weird year we have had!

The first photo is taken from inside the conservatory looking out past a snowflake.

I began a new journal for November as I had filled up the second one of the year. The cover illustration is a watercolour and ink drawing of our house and front garden by our artist friend Dick Skilton.

This journal will take me well into 2021. I began by writing, “November is the month when days become far too short, when light values change and winds get an ice cold edginess. The greenhouse is now full of our less hardy plants, succulents, fuchsias, gingers and cannas. There is colour to be found in there.”

This page is illustrated with photos of some greenhouse highlights.

The second page for November was all about my foliage plant of the month, Hedera the ivies. The photographs show just a few of our many varieties. I wrote, “My foliage plant of the month for November is the ivy, of which we grow twenty or thirty cultivars. We grow them up fences and to cover concrete fence posts.”

Opposite ivies I featured foliage colour, where I wrote,“Autumn is a time to study leaves, to watch as they change colours and drop from the trees and shrubs. Some leaves are so special in November, their colours and patterns.”

I chose one leaf to paint for the next page, a changing leaf of Tetrapanax papyrifera ‘Rex’, using watercolours and Japanese brush pens together to get the desired effect.

Over the page and we find salvias featured. I wrote, “My flowering plant of the month for November is the salvia family. We grow about a dozen varieties and this year they are flowering very late with some still in bud.”

The page featured photos of some of them flowering now.

Leaf colour features again on the following two pages where we turn to acers, an autumn special! I wrote, “One of the key plant families in November is the acer group both trees and shrubs. It is partly the leaf colour but equally important are trunks and stems.”

The final page for November featured our garden tasks of the month, where I wrote, “We have been busy all month as usual, out in the garden whenever it was dry. We have replaced two damaged arches, made hedgehog shelters and more insect homes. We are also having the uneven concrete paths around the house replaced with ‘resin gravel’, so we had prep work to do.”

I will be back in a month or so with my final monthly report of 2020 all about what is happening in our garden in December.

Acers of all kinds are the main attractions at most arboreta at this time of year as their foliage turns rich fiery colours. Similarly in our own garden we have several acers both shrubs and trees to add extra exciting colours in the autumn. I hope you enjoy my gallery of photos taken during November of some of our acers dotted around the garden.

As the second lockdown came to an end in early December we booked for a visit to our local National Trust property, Attingham Park so that we could enjoy another woodland walk. Our daughter and son-in-law, Jo and Rob also booked the same time slot so that we could wander together.

The day dawned overcast, cool and drizzly, but this didn’t reduce our desire to enjoy the woodlands.

Come with us now as we wander the many pathways through the wooded areas of Attingham. I simply took photographs of things that caught my eye!

We finished our walk by following the gravel pathway in front of the hall itself where we discovered this Christmas cameo. A very imaginative creative person or persons had enjoyed themselves setting it up. Their enjoyment was matched by the enjoyment obvious on the faces of three young children pretending to drive the sleigh.

Back here with another look at my garden sketchbook with another selection of my pages. Hope you enjoy them!

I hope you have enjoyed this excursion through my sketchbook. It feels so strange knowing that it is now in Brooklyn Art Gallery where others are looking at my sketches.

During the spring and summer of this year I have been working on a garden sketchbook, trying to show our garden through these two seasons using a variety of media from photography to pencil crayon sketching. A few weeks back I had to send my completed sketchbook over to Brooklyn, USA. My sketchbook is part of a worldwide project created by Brooklyn Art Library. My book will be one of 22 000 from around the world and has now with all the others been digitalised for all to see. (sketchbookproject.com/library)

Here are my sketches for you to have a look. My sketchbook was all about two seasons in our garden, spring and summer. I included pencil sketches, watercolours, pencil crayon work, photo montages and collages and others. I hope you enjoy seeing this first selection of them.

In part two I will share more of my sketches from my Sketchbook.